MUTDUT Update: (Update for HardwareCon, see below)

We got an offer we couldn’t refuse from a Direct Marketing company, who intends to sell MultiCinches (probably under another name) on TV. This represents the 3rd invention Scott Cochran has successfully licensed…

This was never the plan. The original hope was to create a series of interlocking clamps and other tools, “Legos for Adults”. We did so much right, a product in demand, a clever marketing plan, but were killed by the unforeseeable and illogical difficulty in prototyping. No matter which vendor we used, or in which country, design, prototyping and production was ridiculously expensive, ineptitude-laden process, inexplicably worse than prototyping we have done in other fields (Software, writing, soft goods). Through the needlessly tortured, expensive way we learned, (having to self educate by trial and error, with “experts” miserly dispensing instruction that is both costly and wrong) we ultimately brought design and prototyping in house where efficiency, quality, speed and value improved a hundredfold. Had we done the same with with production, MUTDUT would have been a success, (but how unreasonable is that, needing to vertically integrate, buy an injection molding machine and production tool before the product is even market proven? Because no one can manufacture a simple part!?)

But in doing so, not only did we become much more skilled in design, prototyping and manufacturing, but we uncovered an enormous business opportunity thousands of times greater than MUTDUT could have ever been. MUTDUT 2.0 is in stealth mode, developing a business plan, processes and prototypes that allow anyone with a good idea to get to small scale manufacturing and REVENUE, a hundred times faster, cheaper, better and with a smile on their face. And it is not what you think, it is not like 3DHubs or Protolabs, a design studio or InventRight; nothing like it exists on the market. But if it did, MUTDUTs would have succeeded in weeks rather than failed in years, and we would be a nation not just of dreamers and inventors, but of makers and successful small businessmen.

Update for HardwareCon:

•Proto10x’s goal is to make prototyping hardware 10-100x faster, easier, better and cheaper. It does so by creating a new development platform that spans the entire lifecycle and addresses these primary bottlenecks:

•Access to Hardware

•By creating its own prototype specific machinery that is modular versatile enough to prototype virtually any type of product though via any type of process

•Innovation is inherently interesting. Create a show that demonstrates uses of the prototype HW and encourages a new generation of makers and engineers. Allow access to a market to sell products and raise preorder backed investment.